WordPress – Disable Comments

If you find yourself frustrated by spam and searching for wordpress disable comments or turn off comments wordpress, we’re happy to help.

The Quick Answer To How To Disable Comments In WordPress

Log in and go to Settings, Discussion.

Uncheck “Allow people to post comments on new articles”. It’s the third checkbox on the page. See the image below.

Disable Pingbacks Too

Pingbacks are notifications that someone has linked to your content. If you’re getting junky, spam pingbacks, you may want to disable those too (second checkbox).

How to Delete All Comments in WordPress

If you’ve marked comments as spam, it only takes a click to get rid of them. Just go to Comments on your WordPress Dashboard, and then click the small blue link to Spam. You’ll see a button to Empty Spam. Note the very typical example of spam email in the image below:

If you’d rather not have to mark thousands of comments as spam to remove them, keep reading. If you install the Anti-Spam Free WordPress Plugin, spam comments from automatic “bot” programs will be a thing of the past.

I Don’t Really Want to Get Rid of Comments in WordPress, but I Keep Getting Spammed!

Ok, if you’d like comments from real humans, but you’re sick of the robot spam that unscrupulous seo marketers use to create spam comments in WordPress, there are other solutions. Of course there’s the Akismet Plugin, which comes with a new WordPress installation. Akismet, however, isn’t free for small businesses. There is a by-donation option for non-business personal blogs, but for those of you running businesses on a shoestring, you might prefer an alternative to another monthly charge. I recommend the Anti-Spam Free WordPress Plugin.

Try Anti-Spam by Webvitaly for Comment Spam

I love the Anti-Spam WordPress Plugin by Webvitaly. You can get it from the WordPress Repository, or directly from the creator’s site. It’s a better solution than disabling comments completely – most of us want our prospective clients to interact with us, we just don’t want to have to sort through 300 robot-generated spam comments to find each real comment. The plugin works with no annoying Captcha – it’s blocking bot spam, not real people who are filling out forms.

After installing the Anti-Spam WordPress plugin, log out of your WordPress site and test to see that you can post a comment. There are issues with some themes (rarely), and you may have to go to the Settings and make adjustments. You’re going to find that once you have Anti-Spam working, you’ll no longer feel the need to disable WordPress comments.

No More False Flattery and Other Spam

When I first started blogging, I found the quick rush of comments telling me how brilliant I was to be very satisfying… for about as long as it took to realize they were fake. Initially, at least, none of them came from people who actually read my comments, and I’ve become merciless in deleting any comment that doesn’t actually contribute to the topic at hand. My rule is that if you’re in doubt of whether it’s spam, mark it spam. Those who take the time to write an intelligent, thoughtful article comment are always welcome, and I go out of my way to reward them by installing the CommentLuv Plugin. CommentLuv gives commentors links to their recent blog content, for approved comments.

Once the spam commenting is gone, it’s much easier to maintain WordPress. Disable comments if you must, or just try Anti-Spam.

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About the author

Karilee

I'm a big fan of entrepreneurship. Most of my learning, teaching and business is focused on effectively creating "freedom businesses" that allow you to focus on your strengths, and bring what you're really good at to the world - profitably.
My clients are looking for more of the right customers - and I show them how to make that happen. I help them develop their web presence through their website, SEO, social media and other marketing tactics.

5 Responses to WordPress – Disable Comments

Karilee, I hope this flattery doesn’t sound like spam! It’s great to discover your site; it’s a great resource.

Q: My WordPress blog gets a ton of spam comments, that get caught by Akismet. (1) When I batch-delete them, do I run the risk of deleting any legit comments? (2) Are Askimet and Spam-Free equally effective?

Absolutely a batch delete runs the risk of deleting genuine comments. If you’ve gotten behind and a thousand have piled up, you’ll have to sort them if you want to preserve the precious real commenters, like yourself. But once you have Akismet or Spam Free WordPress in place, you’ll only ever have a handful to sort through. Spam Free WordPress won’t delete “real” comments. I’ve heard of Akismet putting a real comment in spam, but I think it’s rare. I haven’t used it myself as my sites are commercial and I’ve never subscribed.

Just make sure that after you install either plugin, you test to make sure your comment form still works (while you’re logged out).